


The Responsibility of Cooperation

by mihawque (mona_liar)



Series: Heavy is the Head which bears all Knowledge [3]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Character Analysis, Character Study, Gen, Military research, One Piece Science, POV First Person, POV Outsider, Science, Worldbuilding, human weapons, no edits or beta we die like Ace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-19 01:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29743185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mona_liar/pseuds/mihawque
Summary: My colleagues had warned me about the idea of poison as a new weapon for the pacifista, but I didn't listen to them. How was I to know Doctor Vegapunk would react so badly to another scientist bringing it up?
Relationships: Doctor Vegapunk & Caesar Clown, Doctor Vegapunk & Vinsmoke Judge
Series: Heavy is the Head which bears all Knowledge [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1854583
Kudos: 2





	The Responsibility of Cooperation

**Author's Note:**

> Voilà, I'm back with another installment in this series! Because if Oda isn't giving us any more info on Vegapunk and whatever the fuck his deal is, I'm gonna gladly make up for all of that myself!   
> Anyway, the fact that both Caesar and Judge used to work with Vegapunk has SO MUCH POTENTIAL and I'm literally obsessed with this thought. Let's hope writing some of it down will allow me to concentrate on different things.  
> I hope you like this fic! Have fun reading!

It is an unsettling feeling to read about events, people, decisions taken by others, and know what the information means without fully understanding it. Call it the misfortune of late birth or the limits of the human brain, but when the facility received news about the alliance between Trafalgar Law and Strawhat Luffy, the resignation of Donquixote Doflamingo from his position as one of the Seven Warlords and the discovery of his fraudulent reign over Dressrosa, all of this within a few days, it felt like there was no time to catch a breath and take in the magnitude of one story before the next newspaper was dropped into our laps with even more ground-breaking revelations. So I did what I did best in these times and continued to work. There was always too much to do these days.

Ever since the new Fleet Admiral Sakazuki had taken up his position and the New World was beginning to organize anew, filling the vacuum left by Whitebeard’s death and the dissolution of his crew, throwing his hat in the ring for strategic important ones, there was no end to the orders we received. Changes needed to be made to warships. Improvements were required for battle cannons. The pacifistas were a never ending nightmare keeping me awake at night.

“Why can’t we just use poison? I mean, Magellan put up a very good fight against both Strawhat Luffy and Blackbeard in Impel Down. If it’s in gas form, the pacifistas could incapacitate even the largest crew, maybe even entire countries overturned by the Revolutionaries and it takes up barely one tenth of the space as long as the density is high enough. There would be less infrastructural damage as well.”

It had been the second night I had spent with less than 4 hours of sleep, working on a project for artificial stem cells, which we had created based on Doctor Vegapunk’s formula of life and which were to be implemented under the pacifistas back tanks, similarly to bone marrow or organs in real humans, to supplement them with energy and would recharge automatically with some rest instead of needing to return to a special Marine Base before being sent off to their next mission. According to the mechanics, however, there was no place to install such additional features without leaving out some of the more high powered light beams the pacifistas were primarily known for. I was no chemist, but at this point I was ready for any alternative that allowed me to make progress and thus protected my head from the chopping block. Vegapunk was already jumpy these days and his patience-fuse was much shorter than usual. If I failed and could not deliver the promised results on time, either to him or the Marine Headquarters, lack of sleep would be the least of my problems.

“No poison,” said Vivianne, without looking up from the blueprints laid out on the table. Her eyes were marked by deep, blue rings and coffee stains covered her shirt and lab coat as if she were an artist after hours spent in front of a canvas.

“Why not? It’s efficient. We have Magellan, and Caesar Clown’s research notes; it’s cheap and-“

“No. poison,” Vivianne said again, still not looking up, this time with more weight in her voice. The two words struck like a double hammer fall.

I did not ask further. I would have gotten nowhere and we were all too irritated already for me to push my proposition more. Already there was no energy left in me, but even less left to engage in battles I could not win. Not that night, not in the state everyone was in. I would have to wait until my time had come.

Throughout the next days, nothing new, nothing ground-breaking struck us. We made good progress on the stem cells, accelerating their production process by 20% in comparison to our first fully functional batch. At night, after going back to my room after several more hours in the lab post-dinner, I would carefully note down everything that had happened that day. Changes observed overnight (there rarely were any), methods, possible new theories or uses concerning the cells. I might not have been Dr. Vegapunk himself, but I was good at everything I had been doing in the research facility and I wasn’t about to let any recognition of my hard work slip through my fingers because I didn’t have enough up-to-date and standardised notes to write a full research paper with. I planned on doing so later, when the situation had died down and there would be time and attention for such things.

At the same time and near constantly, I was still mulling over the problem of practicality regarding these new cells. No matter how good they were, no matter how effective, no one would ever see them at their full potential if I didn’t find a way to incorporate them into fieldwork, into at least one working pacifista. What was one light beam more or less going to matter?

Dr. Vegapunk was rarely seen these days, even less so than usual. My work stress induced insomnia made me go into the kitchen more often in the middle of the night, yet I hadn’t seen him in a few weeks. If things went on like this, I would never get the opportunity to present him my idea for freeing the necessary space. I could not let that happen! I would search him out in his office, risking to invoke his legendary ire, if I had to.

The longer I thought about it, the more obvious the solution of poison gas appeared. We already had some extensive research done on the matter, I had even unearthed some formulas I could only assume were by Caesar Clown, as indicated by the crinkly and wonky C.C. signature on the bottom of the pages. I had everything planned out. Clown and Vegapunk had been colleagues, he would know about the efficiency and reliability of his work, that it was exactly the kind of weapon the pacifista needed. The freed space for the stem cells was only an added bonus, although a large one. He would listen to me and have no rational choice but to agree to my proposition, I told myself, no matter what Vivianne said. She was my senior, but I had earned my place in this facility, I knew what I was doing, and my idea was right. I would not sit around doing nothing, waiting to be replaced with some fresh sprung up graduate who needed months of getting settled while the government threw me away to some remote island like left-over trash because I could not deliver the results they wanted.

That was before I had read the news about Punk Hazard, short and cut out as they usually were concerning these events of high importance. I had everything organised: notes written down neatly, copies of Clown’s formulas, at least the ones I had determined were the most relevant for a short pitch. Blue prints of the current pacifista-modell and new ones for a prototype including the stem cells. I knew Dr. Vegapunk was in his office, and I liked to think we had talked often enough for him to remember either my face or my name, if not both. I counted the steps up to the floor of his office to calm me down and took a deep breath before finally knocking on his door. There was no going back now.

No answer. I knocked a second time. Still no voice from inside. I knew the doctor was in his office. I had been told as much and I could hear him working inside. At the risk of being obliterated into atoms by one of his inventions for daring to walk in unprompted, I opened the door. After all, whether I was decimated now or later, when I had to reap the sorrows off unfinished work, didn’t make that much of a difference.

I was greeted by the expected sight of Dr. Vegapunk buried in his work. Just like the previous times I had been there, the office was covered in papers, observations, test results, and more, the chalkboards on the walls and the additional ones on wheels covered in his unreadable handwriting. He was working on something different than last time but what this different was, I had no idea. As always, no one was able to understand the doctor’s work but himself.

I cleared my throat.

“Dr. Vegapunk, sir?”

He continued to shuffle in his papers, muttering quietly to himself and did not show any kind of reaction to my presence. Had he even noticed I was there? Could the brightest mind in the employment of the World Government be this unobservant? Or did he simply deem me not important enough to let him be interrupted in his work?

It shouldn’t matter. I had come this far; I would not back down now.

“As you might know, I am on the team in charge of developing the artificial stem cells and integrating them into the next pacifista model. Our main obstacle is the lack of space inside the shell as the catalysator tanks for the light beams and the cooling systems are in the way. I have a proposal on how to solve this without loosing any of the pacifista’s offensive power.”

The doctor still didn’t say anything in response, as if I wasn’t there at all. That was good. After all, no answer wasn’t the same as a negative answer.

“Poison is much more stable for transportation and has a significantly smaller risk of causing collateral damage in case of physical damage. We could develop different types to cover all the possible needs, no matter what type of situation the pacifista may find themselves in. Large scale, deliberate, paralyzing, lethal. Especially in gas form, I am convinced this would in fact be the most effecti-“

The folder with all my neatly organised notes was brutally ripped out of my hands.

“What-“

In all my time in the facility, on this island, during the many times I had spoken to Dr. Vegapunk so far, I had never seen him like this. I hadn’t noticed when I had stepped into the office, but his already eccentric appearance seemed even closer to that of a madman than usual. He had dark rings under his eyes, his hair was sticking in all directions and there were no less than three different pairs of glasses stacked onto his tight black curls. He had another hanging from his neck on a fine chain and I could see a fifth pair in the breast pocket of his lab coat. Black ink smudges covered his forehead and I thought I saw letters on his left cheek, as if a text like a newspaper had transferred onto his skin.

“We will _never_ use poison, do you understand me? Not in any way, under any circumstances, and especially not as gas.”

His voice was tight, as if he was being dressed through a tight tube. His eyes were wild, hushing over my notes in his hands. He stilled when he reached a yellowed paper. They were the formulas and notes by Caesar Clown. Suddenly, he was eerily calm.

“Where did you find this?”

“In the archives. I know you used to work with-“

He did not let me finish.

“If you want to continue to work in this facility, if you want continue to work on anything being researched here or with any of the researchers employed here, if you want to have any semblance of a stable life instead of being sent away to the most unimportant of islands in one of the four blues before you get replaced with another mindless goon from the University, you will never bring up the idea of poison ever again, have I made myself clear? You will never speak of of Caesar Clown again, or Punk Hazard, or Judge Vinsmoke, ever again. You will not even think of them or anything they have ever worked on. Have I made myself clear?”

I gulped and barely managed to nod. Doctor Vegapunk had always been an intimidating person, a legend among us mortals, but this was the first time I was truly scared of him.

“I need you to understand that _you_ are unimportant. We are all just here to realise orders given to us, orders for a higher purpose. Your name will never reach greatness, any possible envy towards or rivalry with any of your colleagues is utterly redundant. We do what we are told to do. The project of your team and you is to develop the stem cells; not to engineer another weapon for the pacifista robots. You will concentrate and think about nothing else until you receive new orders. Do you understand?”

I nodded again. He did not look away.

“Yes”, I finally said. He did not look satisfied with my answer but snapped my file shut and took one step back. I finally felt like I could breathe again.

“I will keep this. Out.”

Doctor Vegapunk had already turned his back on me and begun fiddling with something else. I did not think twice about following his orders and stormed out of his office. I did not look up any of Caesar Clown’s work ever again.

I saw Vivianne again a few hours later in the canteen. She dropped a newspaper on my plate.

“I told you, we don’t do poison here. Especially not poison by Clown.”

The newspaper was old, clearly from the archives. On the front page, in deep black ink, it read:

CAESAR CLOWN DESTROYS WORLD GOVERNMENT LABORATORY AND ESCAPES ARREST. ALL LIFE ON ISLAND DESTROYED.

Directly under the headline was a picture of his bounty. 300,000,000.

I still had no idea who Judge Vinsmoke was.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you liked it! I would love to hear your thoughts! You can find me on tumblr as well, @[mihawque.tumblr.com](https://mihawque.tumblr.com/)
> 
> *youtuber voice* And don't forget to kudo, bookmark and comment!!!!!


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